By now I’m used to people coming and going from Savannah. It’s that kind of place. People see the undulating trees, the 19th-century houses, the marsh, the squares. They fall in love. They want to move here.

I did just the reverse. I fell in love with a job offer on the newspaper. Affection for the city — love for friends, for the coast, for the gardening opportunities — came next. I said yes to the job before I could pull down the “S” book from the World Book Encyclopedia series at the Gainesville Sun, where I was an obituary writer.

I was happy, but it always kind of hurt my feelings when a reporter would leave. For the record, it happened fairly often. I would feel sucker punched.

That’s kind of how I felt last month when I heard Jake and Miriam Hodesh, social entrepreneurs and social activists both, most lately, Jake of Creative Coast, Miriam of Gulfstream, were moving to their hometown of Cincinnati for other ventures. By this time I had become used to seeing them, to hearing what they were doing next, to thinking them part of the fabric

I have T-shirts from three of their very cool ventures: a white New Moon of Savannah shirt from a Saturday market they tried; a brown and turquoise one from the first Geekend — their baby before they sold it — and a very green shirt from Creative Coast, an organization Jake headed.

And even though I have officially adopted Nora Ephron’s line — “I remember nothing” — I do remember meeting these two at a Laughing Yoga session with the incomparable Judith Snow. I do remember hearing that one of the first things they did when they got to town was to visit then-Mayor Otis Johnson and ask who he thought were the 10 most influential people in town (oh, to see that list). I do remember an art project they sponsored where people redesigned discarded street signs. I remember Refuel Savannah when Jake and a partner would go around to restaurants to collect, refine and sell vegetable oil to be used as automobile fuel.

They were engaged here; the city caught their fancy. They gave it their all. So when I heard they were leaving, it felt as if they were jumping ship. I’m old school like that — baseball players should play for one team, people should stay married, artists who are painters should only paint — even though I myself have left jobs, changed phone numbers, traded cities, swapped careers, abandoned addresses, left friends.

I know that nothing stays the same. People need new challenges and cities need new people. Both entities need to be honest. I wish we weren’t so afraid of that, individually and as a city. I wish we could say, “Houston, we have a problem.”

How about our school system? There are some bright spots, but overall it’s a big fat C-minus. Teachers and troubled kids are in the same boat: They need help. Is our crime under control? Are you kidding? Not when the techno-phobic police department doesn’t make all the data available to ordinary people like us or to nerdy techie-type people who can analyze the data. What are they afraid of?

Then there are companies such as JCB and Gulfstream. They are so desperate for good workers (and so nervous about the pool of applicants to draw from) that they started partnering up with Savannah Tech and other schools. How many other Chamber of Commerce businesses can say that?

With SCAD and artsy types our bread-and-butter ticket to the world, do we really want to fight public art projects? Let’s embrace them.

With access and availability to fresh food and good health so important, what are we doing to teach people how to cook, how to farm, how to eat? At the last City Council meeting, I heard an impassioned Mayor Jackson talk (and not for the first time) about starting community gardens on Augusta Avenue. Win-win. What about putting this on the fast track?

Yes, the Hodeshes were “newcomers.” They didn’t stay. They were young. But they were smart. They were quick reads. They never stopped thinking. We could use some more of this kind of thinking.